Underrun VS UserGuiding: Which Platform Delivers Faster Decisions and Easier Onboarding?
April 15 2025
Underrun VS UserGuiding: Which Platform Delivers Faster Decisions and Easier Onboarding?
A successful customer journey involves two critical phases: getting the customer successfully integrated and ensuring they can effectively use the product to achieve value. While both are crucial for retention, they address distinct challenges. Underrun focuses on streamlining the initial integration planning and setup through transparent, exportable plans. UserGuiding, a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP), focuses on improving in-app product adoption and user guidance once the user is inside the application. They solve different problems, but which one contributes more to easy onboarding and faster decisions in its respective domain?
Understanding the Players: What is Underrun?
Underrun tackles the friction in initial SaaS setup and integration by providing public, detailed, structured onboarding plan templates. It emphasizes pre-sale transparency, allowing customers to understand the full implementation scope upfront. Its key feature is the ability to export these plans directly into customers' project management tools (like Jira, Asana), enabling seamless integration into their existing workflows and proactive planning.
Understanding the Players: What is UserGuiding?
UserGuiding is a no-code Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) designed to improve user onboarding within a web application. It allows teams to create in-app interactive guides, product tours, checklists, tooltips, hotspots, and announcement modals without writing code. It aims to accelerate product adoption, reduce support tickets, improve feature discovery, and track user engagement with guidance content.
Core Mission: Integration Planning vs. In-App Guidance
Underrun's Goal
To solve integration planning complexity and lack of pre-sale transparency. The aim is a smooth, fast, predictable initial setup and integration process.
UserGuiding's Goal
To solve poor in-app user guidance and feature adoption. The aim is faster user activation, better feature discovery, and reduced user confusion within the product.
Operational Arena: Pre-Integration vs. Inside the App
Underrun
Operates before and during the initial integration/onboarding phase. This often involves pre-sale communication and direct interaction with project management tools, external to the core product itself.
UserGuiding
Operates directly inside the live web application, interacting with end-users in real-time as they navigate and use the software.
Key Capabilities: Plan Exports vs. No-Code Guides
Underrun Features
Public Plan Templates (Structured Data/JSON), a discoverable Plan Repository, and direct Export-to-PM Tool functionality (Jira, Asana, etc.).
UserGuiding Features
A No-code In-App Guide Builder, versatile elements like Checklists, Tooltips, Modals, user Segmentation capabilities, and Analytics focused on guide interaction and effectiveness.
Impact on 'Easy Onboarding': Setup vs. Usage
How Underrun Helps
It simplifies the initial setup and integration phase of onboarding. By providing clarity upfront, setting clear expectations, and integrating with the customer's project management tools, it removes early friction points.
How UserGuiding Helps
It streamlines the initial product usage phase of onboarding. By offering step-by-step guidance directly within the UI, it helps users navigate core workflows and understand the product faster.
Impact on 'Faster Decision Making': Implementation vs. Adoption
Underrun's Influence
Facilitates faster purchase and implementation planning decisions. The upfront transparency regarding integration scope, timelines, and requirements allows potential customers and internal teams to commit and plan more quickly.
UserGuiding's Influence
Facilitates faster user adoption decisions (e.g., a user deciding to try a feature immediately after seeing a relevant guide). Its analytics also inform faster product development and guidance strategy decisions.
Pricing Models
Underrun
[Placeholder: Information on Underrun's pricing model needed].
UserGuiding
Typically employs a tiered pricing structure based on Monthly Active Users (MAU) and the set of features included.
Reviews & Reputation (G2, Capterra)
Underrun
[Placeholder: Reviews likely focus on effectiveness in solving planning complexity, pre-sale transparency, and integration setup issues].
UserGuiding
Generally receives positive reviews praising its ease of use for creating diverse in-app guidance (guides, checklists, tooltips). Users often highlight its effectiveness in boosting user activation, driving feature adoption, and reducing support load. It's frequently compared to other DAPs like Pendo or WalkMe.
When to Use Underrun
Underrun is your best bet when onboarding challenges arise before a user even logs into your product. Consider it if:
- Your integration or setup process is complex and requires clear, detailed definition upfront.
- Sales cycles or implementations face delays because customers are unprepared for the technical requirements or necessary steps.
- You want to build trust early and accelerate sales decisions by offering full transparency on the implementation process.
- Synchronizing implementation tasks directly with your customers' project management tools is a key requirement.
When to Use UserGuiding
UserGuiding becomes essential once users are actively inside your application, particularly if they struggle with initial usage, feature discovery, or specific workflows. Opt for UserGuiding if:
- You observe users dropping off during their initial product interactions or failing to reach activation milestones.
- Your support team frequently handles tickets related to basic feature usage or common workflows.
- You need to actively improve adoption rates for specific new or underutilized features.
- Providing contextual, in-app help, announcements, or feedback collection is a priority.
Conclusion: Complementary Tools for a Complete Journey
Underrun and UserGuiding are not direct competitors but rather address distinct, sequential phases of the customer lifecycle. Underrun excels at making the initial setup and integration faster and more predictable, enabling quicker, more informed decisions during pre-sale and planning. UserGuiding shines once the user is integrated, ensuring they learn the product effectively and adopt key features, accelerating value realization within the app. For a truly seamless end-to-end experience, many SaaS companies could benefit significantly from leveraging both platforms: Underrun to smooth the path to the product, and UserGuiding to guide the journey through the product.